The present invention relates to software patterns and more particularly to aiding a system in need of service by locating a service provider capable of delivering the required service, wherein this is accomplished by way of a locally addressable interface.
An important use of computers is the transfer of information over a network. Currently, the largest computer network in existence is the Internet. The Internet is a worldwide interconnection of computer networks that communicate using a common protocol. Millions of computers, from low end personal computers to high-end super computers are coupled to the Internet.
The Internet grew out of work funded in the 1960s by the U.S. Defense Department""s Advanced Research projects Agency. For a long time, Internet was used by researchers in universities and national laboratories to share information. As the existence of the Internet became more widely known, many users outside of the academic/research community (e.g., employees of large corporations) started to use Internet to carry electronic mail.
In 1989, a new type of information system known as the World-Wide-Web (xe2x80x9cthe Webxe2x80x9d) was introduced to the Internet. Early development of the Web took place at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory. The Web is a wide-area hypermedia information retrieval system aimed to give wide access to a large universe of documents. At that time, the Web was known to and used by the academic/research community only. There was no easily available tool which allows a technically untrained person to access the Web.
In 1993, researchers at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) released a Web browser called xe2x80x9cMosaicxe2x80x9d that implemented a graphical user interface (GUI). Mosaic""s graphical user interface was simple to learn yet powerful. The Mosaic browser allows a user to retrieve documents from the World-Wide-Web using simple point-and-click commands. Because the user does not have to be technically trained and the browser is pleasant to use, it has the potential of opening up the Internet to the masses.
The architecture of the Web follows a conventional client-server model. The terms xe2x80x9cclientxe2x80x9d and xe2x80x9cserverxe2x80x9d are used to refer to a computer""s general role as a requester of data (the client) or provider of data (the server). Under the Web environment, Web browsers reside in clients and Web documents reside in servers. Web clients and Web servers communicate using a protocol called xe2x80x9cHyperText Transfer Protocolxe2x80x9d (HTTP). A browser opens a connection to a server and initiates a request for a document. The server delivers the requested document, typically in the form of a text document coded in a standard Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) format, and when the connection is closed in the above interaction, the server serves a passive role, i.e., it accepts commands from the client and cannot request the client to perform any action.
The communication model under the conventional Web environment provides a very limited level of interaction between clients and servers. In many systems, increasing the level of interaction between components in the systems often makes the systems more robust, but increasing the interaction increases the complexity of the interaction and typically slows the rate of the interaction. Thus, the conventional Web environment provides less complex, faster interactions because of the Web""s level of interaction between clients and servers.
A system, method, and article of manufacture are provided for delivering service via a locally addressable interface. A plurality of globally addressable interfaces and a plurality of locally addressable interfaces are provided. Access is allowed to a plurality of different sets of services from each of the globally addressable interfaces and the locally addressable interface. Each interface has a unique set of services associated therewith. The globally addressable interfaces are registered in a naming service for facilitating access thereto. Use of the locally addressable interfaces is permitted only via the globally addressable interfaces or another locally addressable interface.
In an aspect of the present invention, the use of the locally addressable interfaces may be facilitated by structured-based communication. In another aspect of the present invention, the access may be allowed via a customer interface proxy, a customer server and a database of the globally addressable interface.
In one embodiment of this aspect of the present invention, a request may be received by the customer interface proxy for a reference to one of the locally addressable interfaces. The request may then be forwarded across a network to the database of a server of the globally addressable interface. Also, Data from the database may be returned in response to the request. Additionally, an object may be instantiated and populated it with the data by the server of the globally addressable interface. The object may also be associated with one of the locally addressable interfaces. Also, the locally addressable interface may be forwarded to the globally addressable interface. Also in this embodiment of this particular aspect of the present invention, a reference may be forwarded to the locally addressable interface across the network and to the customer interface proxy. In addition, this aspect may further allow the use of the customer interface proxy to access the locally addressable interface across the network.